 |
| Harriet Spizziri, Director |
|
| Director’s Notes:
In My Living Room – Harriet Spizziri
I am a Theater Director by trade. I have directed 40 plays. Most of them in a theater in Chicago, IL, U.S.A., I founded in 1981, the Next Theater Company, with my partner, Brian Finn. I was the Artistic Director there for 14 years.
I began “In My Living Room” in my living room with a wonderful man, Pat Toal, who is a Federal Court Judge and also a soldier in Vietnam in 1968. We just let the camera run and he began to talk to me. What happened in my living room was as much as a surprise to him as it was to me. Stories of his year in Vietnam began to pour out of him as we looked at each other hour after hour.
I couldn’t believe it; I was looking at a man’s soul, his pain, his courage and insight about the war. After two afternoons we stopped the camera and he went home. I thought – I can deliver this to the world – unscripted, and unrehearsed, one take only, exactly as I saw it with some cutting of unnecessary dialogue.
My next step was to consider some of the photos Pat took in Vietnam, mixed in with his more recent photos of Chicago. I found a photo of artwork relating to the war, which led me to the National Vietnam Veterans’ Art Museum (NVVAM). While I was there, unexpectedly, I met another Vietnam War veteran. He was having a showing of his work, Memorial Day 2007. He was nearing the end of his life caused by Agent Orange. His work expressed his pain, his soul searching, and his inability to understand what happened! I asked him if I could use his work in my documentary, he said, Of course, Yes!
Then I went to talk to my associate from the theater, Larry Hart. I asked him if he could incorporate art into our piece. He said he would gladly try. We also discussed that we didn’t want anything in our film that had been seen in other war films. He told me he had been a hippie in 1968 Chicago and he had taken some footage of the demonstrations in Chicago at the Democratic Convention – How lucky this was.
We mixed all these wonderful ingredients together in the simplest way possible and we came out with a simple, little, most important documentary that we are anxious to share with you.
|
|